Kim Hall
CABS Research Fellow
Department of Fisheries and Wildlife
13 Natural Resources Building
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824-1222
(517) 432-8203 phone or
(517) 282-8346
(517) 432-1699 fax
E-mail: hallkim@msu.edu

Position and Current Research. I am currently a Center for Applied Diversity Science (CABS) Fellow (Conservation International), and an adjunct researcher at Michigan State, working with Dr. Jianguo (Jack) Liu on issues related to the sustainable management of forest biodiversity. I came to MSU as a Nature Conservancy Smith Fellow, and I also work with a TNC scientist, Dr. David Ewert at TNC's Great Lakes Office.

For the Smith Fellowship project, I joined a team of faculty members (Liu, Mike Walters, and Frank Lupi) and graduate students developing a spatially-explicit ecological and economic model of the effects of changes in forest and white-tailed deer management in a four-county section of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. My work on this project is ongoing, and focuses on how changes in management may affect migratory songbirds in the region. Specifically, I am interested in how incorporating information on songbird demographics (rather than simply distribution data) may help in determining priority conservation areas for rare bird species. For the CABS Fellowship, I have joined a team of researchers based in California that are assessing the potential impacts of climate change this state’s rare species and ecosystems. My work on this projects focuses on ranking potential risks to vertebrate species, with a focus on comparing species with different dispersal abilities and susceptibilities to the effects of land use change. Currently, I am also developing proposals with collaborators at Michigan State to examine the many trade-offs (e.g., soil fertility, timber and carbon sequestration values, value of habitats to other species) inherent in substituting plantations for fire regeneration in the jack pine systems that provide critical breeding habitat for the federally endangered Kirtland’s warbler (Dendroica kirtlandii), and am collaborating with Dave Ewert and other scientists on a project linking the breeding and wintering habitats of Kirtland’s warblers through relocation of birds banded in The Bahamas on their Michigan breeding grounds.

I am very interested in helping to facilitate the use of conservation research in conservation and management decisions, and one way I have pursued this interest is by acting as a steering committee member for the Michigan Bird Conservation Initiative (http://www.nabci-us.org/michigan/)

Education

• PhD - Terrestrial Ecology, 2002. University of Michigan, School of Natural Resources and Environment, Ann Arbor, MI.
  
• MS - Conservation Biology, 1996. University of Michigan, School of Natural Resources and Environment, Ann Arbor, MI.
  
• BA in Biology and Environmental Studies, 1989. Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH.
  
  
  Research Interests
  
  My research focuses on understanding how birds respond to different habitat conditions, and on developing ways to integrate bird demographic information into habitat conservation planning using approaches and analysis tools from landscape ecology. I am particularly interested in the process of avian habitat selection, and in understanding spatial and temporal associations between territory choices (e.g., location and size) and demographic parameters (e.g., age of adults, reproductive success). At present, most conservation planning for forest songbirds birds relies solely on survey (point-count) data, which provides an index of relative abundance that is linked to habitat characteristics. I hope to develop ways of measuring demographic parameters that are less-labor intensive than traditional breeding season studies, and then use these measures as indices of habitat quality. With a ranking of habitat quality, rather than simple measures of presence/absence, I expect that the usefulness of large-scale spatially explicit models will be improved, especially for identifying key habitats for rare species. Future directions that I would like to explore include the use of acoustic monitoring equipment for determining demographic parameters (e.g., for detecting changes in song characteristics that indicate pairing or nesting success), and the integration of climate change impacts into spatially-explicit forest management models.

Peer-reviewed publications (both published and in prep)

• Hall, Kimberly R. Linking songbird territory boundaries with understory vegetation using geographic boundary analysis. In prep.
• Hall, Kimberly R. Songbird distribution patterns in managed forests: Effects of deer-browse pressure in northern Michigan. In prep.
• Hall, Kimberly R. Using songbird demographics to identify key habitat characteristics for management in northern forests with abundant deer. In review for Ecological Applications.
• Kearns, Laura, Emily Silverman, and Kimberly R. Hall. The relationship of black-throated blue warbler (Dendroica caerulescens Gmelin) and forest breeding bird populations to understory balsam fir in deer-browsed managed forests. In review for Natural Areas Journal.
• Craves, Julie A., and Kimberly R. Hall. 2003. Notable bird sightings from Cuba, winters 2002 and 2003. Journal of Caribbean Ornithology 16: 31-34.
• Root, Terry L., Jeff T. Price, Kimberly R. Hall, Stephen H. Schneider, Cynthia Rosenzweig, and J. Alan Pounds. 2003. "Fingerprints" of global warming on animals and plants around the globe. Nature 421: 57-60.
• Hall, Kimberly R., and Susan L. Maruca. 2001. Mapping a forest mosaic: A comparison of vegetation and bird distributions using geographic boundary analysis. Plant Ecology 156: 105-120.
  

Other publications

• Price, Jeff T., Terry L. Root, Kimberly R. Hall, Gregory Masters, Lisa Curran, William Fraser, Michael Hutchins and Norman Myers. 2000. Climate change, wildlife and ecosystems-Supplemental information prepared for IPCC Working Group II.
• Jacquez, Geoffrey, and Kimberly R. Hall. Similarity, Dissimilarity, and Distance. Chapter 4 in Gamma User Manual. BioMedware Publications, Ann Arbor, MI.
• McVey, Margaret, Kimberly R. Hall, Peter Trenham, Alexander Soast, Leslie Frymier, and Ansara Hirst. 1993. Wildlife Exposure Factors Handbook (Volumes I and II). Office of Research and Development, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. EPA/600/R-93/187a and EPA/600/R93/187b. Also available on the web at http://www.epa.gov/ncea/wefh.htm.
  

Collaborators

• Drs. Jack Liu, Mike Walters, and Frank Lupi, all at Michigan State (Deer and forest Management in Michigan’s upper peninsula).
• Drs. David Rothstein, Deb McCullough, and Larry Leefers, all at Michigan State (Sustainable jack pine management).
• Ph.D. students Ed Laurent, Joseph LeBouton, and Laila Racevskis, all at Michigan State
• Dr. Terry Root (also my PhD advisor), Dr. Dena MacMynowski, Stanford University
• Dr. Lee Hannah, Conservation International, and PIER project Team
• Dr. Dave Ewert, Director of Science for TNC’s Great Lakes Program (http://nature.org/greatlakes)
• Dr. Emily Silverman, University of Michigan
• Julie Craves, Rouge River Bird Observatory, U of M Dearborn (http://www.rrbo.org)